Traffic Exchanges and Safelists

Traffic Exchanges and Safelists: Are They a Waste of Time? (Updated for 2024)

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Are Traffic Exchanges and Safelists a waste of time?  I remember when I first started blogging on WordPress back in early 2020. I did things a lot differently than I do know and I have to say this is something I do still wonder…

For this post I will be looking at Traffic Exchanges and Safelists as a solution for traffic generation and how this affects SEO.

This post here that I am updating is one of 3 early posts I did about SEO and Traffic Tips for website owners.

The other 2 you can find below…

Read SEO and Website Traffic Tips #1 – Here!

SEO and Website Traffic Tips #3 HERE

I mean I have to say things have changed a lot since writing these posts and this information maybe is still valuable but a lot has changed. I think this post may still have some relevancy and not really a fan of deleting my old posts if I can help it so… Here is my update for 2024!

FTC Disclosure:  Please be aware that within this post there are affiliate links, and if you end up making a purchase as a result of clicking on any of the links I may receive a commission.  Read my full affiliate disclosure here

Now…

Traffic Exchanges and Safelists – Are They a Waste of Time?


So I recently wrote a post about my experience of driving traffic to my websites using a variety of different methods.  These are just some very basic easy lessons and information that I’ve learned.

Following up on my previous post I discussed things like;

  • SEM and Paid Traffic (Search Engine Marketing)
  • Traffic Exchanges
  • SEO and Keywords
  • Social Sharing (Social Media Marketing)

This is an expansion on this where hopefully I can give you something to think about for growing the amount of page views you are getting for your blog posts.

I hope this information can be helpful and can be useful for getting more eyes on your work. Now…

About Traffic Exchanges – Are These Worth Your Time?


When I first started using Traffic Exchanges there was two I used to use quite a bit.  Traffup and HitVsHit.com

HitVsHit.com is no longer online but TraffUp is still going. If you you google Traffic Exchanges there are still plenty out there. I see on Google the top search result is 10KHits.com.

In any case with these sites you can either do 2 things. View selected URLs for points to get your URL shown to other users or you can pay for points which means your URL will get shown but you won’t have to earn points from viewing other peoples URLs. I think I actually did earn a few commissions on my product reviews using TraffUp.

One of my first product reviews was really unbelievable. If you read my home page and how I made my first affiliate commissions after only 1 week of blogging again it was this post. I messed up with this I think as I moved the post to WordPress from Blogger but I did make a few more commissions after this and I think at least one was from using TraffUp.

However, here is the thing about TraffUp and other Traffic Exchanges most people will click the link for points but they wont actually read the content. This can be bad for SEO because if Google sees page views but people are only on your page for a short time this can look like spam and hurt your rankings.

Pages that do well are the ones where people start reading and end up reading the whole post.

Content like this which people go on to share and comment on is the content that ends up on page one. You can target Low Hanging Fruit Keywords that will take top spot as no one else is using them but good content that people read from start to finish is a whole different SEO animal.

The thing is you might actually get people that find your content with this tactic who actually do read all of it. If you can catch them with the first few lines and your content is interesting but most people only will care about the points.

Now, let’s look at…


I think if it’s your lucky day you might make the odd commission from your affiliate links or whatever if you are using Traffic Exchanges.  That is what I think.

Someone I spoke to who said about Traffic Exchanges not being good at a site called SEO Clerks said this to…  It was a response to a question I asked –

“What are some good ad traffic tips?”

I got one answer and what was suggested was the best way to get traffic is through PPC and Backlinks.

So for #1 PPC for those that don’t know is short for Pay Per Click

Examples of PPC or Pay Per Click are Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and Bing Ads.  

Then #2 Backlinks are when people share links to your content on their own websites or forums. 

A good way to do this is by finding other websites in the same kind of niche as yours and agreeing to share a backlink of theirs in return for sharing a link of yours.

Tip:  If you receive a comment from somebody.  Leave one back and this will leave a backlink in the comments section of their website.   Make sure this comes across as natural. In the training I took from Matt Diggity’s Affiliate Lab it suggested email outreach to find willing website owners to use your backlinks. This can be a bit scary at first but it is well worth doing.

What Are Backlinks?


There are actually a lot of people that sell Backlinks on sites like SEO Clerks and even Fiverr, but there is a quality aspect.  The guy who commented on my question explained that one of the best ways to get traffic is from High DA Backlinks.  The DA stands for Domain Authority.

This is where points are assigned based on the Authority of the Domain.  So if you were to purchase a high DA Backlink as opposed to multiple low DA Backlinks one that has 60 DA would be better than 10 that have 6 DA.

It isn’t something I’ve tried yet and honestly I was told at Wealthy Affiliate, on one of the community posts I read that backlinks won’t help you get indexed.  They used to be very powerful apparently but something happened with a Google update and apparently, they don’t work the same as before.

Still, it might be something worth looking into.  PPC definitely (100%) and backlinks I don’t really know but one related thing – Internal links actually can help SEO and ranking apparently.  The more you have the better.  I shall not go into this here but a very good post on Wealthy Affiliate if anyone is interested.

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Safelists Incl. Herculist and Solo Ads


Herculist Traffic Exchanges and Safelists

Another idea to generate leads.  I found out about Herculist through another website called Leadsleap.

I have not been a member for long but I definitely see a lot of potential here.  It’s a little bit confusing, to begin with, but to get started my recommendation is to try three things;

i.) get acquainted with the free mailer system.

You are allowed to send one email every 24 hours, this will be received by a 1000 different people a day.  This is what is called a Solo Ad.  You can actually pay to send to bigger email lists, and Herculist has many different opportunities if you would like to explore this further.

Herculist Solo Ads Traffic Exchanges and Safelists

*Note: I would not pay for any of these services UNLESS you know what you are doing!

ii.) Secondly, this is very important!


Be careful with which email address you use for receiving emails.  Having a new email account just for receiving messages from Herculist members is highly recommended.

Unfortunately, this is the downside to Herculist – You will also receive around 1000 emails a day from other members of the website.  So just make sure you don’t use your primary email.  You can use it to sign up with but use a fresh email address for receiving Herculist emails.

In fact; Herculist requires 2 email addresses make 2 new ones because honestly, it is a good platform but if you start getting bombarded with their emails on your personal email account you will hate them for it.  100+ emails a day they send.  They are worth reading actually but my personal Hotmail I have had to stop using because there is no space left.  Very annoying? but still I would say check Herculist out…


iii.)  Watch the Training Videos. 

If you click on the Support tab this will tell you everything you need to know.  I was like a headless chicken after signing up with this site.  It was so confusing but soon as I watched the videos it explained a whole lot to me about how Herculist works.

These videos will tell you everything you need to know about how you can use Herculist to its full potential. So check the Support tab you can’t miss it.

This has 5 different tutorials about using the site. These will tell you everything you need to know.

Join Herculist Today!

Pinterest and Tailwind Tribal SM Marketing


I haven’t tried this one yet.  It’s to do with Pinterest.  If you see the video in this section everything will be explained a lot more clearly.  Not only this but this video also demonstrates a technique on how to go about contacting the right people for backlinks.

The process I will explain briefly.  So, you will need a Pinterest Business account.  You can do this easily from just a regular Pinterest Account.  I’ll leave this for anybody interested to work out for themselves.

Next, get your board count up to 20-25.  Make boards for 20-25 areas of your niche and pin 20-25 images to each.  Add board descriptions and remember to fill out the character count of your pins.  I usually write a few sentences with keyword and tags.  Be sure to add links to your posts on your website as well.

Then signup to a site called Tailwind join a tribe and voila.  A whole tribe of people sharing your content through social media.  The only thing though is you will have to share other posts in return but it’s a win-win situation really as it means your social media accounts are becoming more active.

In Conclusion


So at the time of writing this, I was surprised to find I had a new sale on Clickbank.  It’s hardly any reason to start opening the champagne but exposure wise all I did with my post was write a post on my FB business page, Traffup and that’s it I think.

The post on the business page I did boost on FB ads but this wasn’t successful as my account was disabled  Something people should take note of actually – be very careful with FB ads – friendly is not exactly how I would describe them.

About this edition of SEO and Website Traffic Tips though.  I really enjoyed writing the first one so this is something more for people to look at.  A few good ideas that might help.

I think I will write a 3rd one to follow up.  Maybe just to go over the results of some of the ideas above especially – Herculist, Google Ads and Facebook Ads.  Plus will see what else I can come up with…

and If you missed the last post you can read here;  SEO and Website Traffic Top Tips #1


Your Feedback

Finally, if you have found this post helpful then, please like and share on your Social Media channels.

Any question or feedback you’d like to leave, as well as any comments, would be great to hear from you and you can leave in the comments section below!

Also, please help us grow as a platform by sharing this content with your contacts on Social Media, following us on Facebook, Twitter etc. and by subscribing to our email list.

All the best until next time;

Many thanks for reading, and hope to see you again soon;

Alex

Recommended Post:  My No.#1 Suggestion!

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22 thoughts on “Traffic Exchanges and Safelists: Are They a Waste of Time? (Updated for 2024)”

  1. Hi, thanks for sharing this article. I found it quite interesting am going to bookmark it for later readings as well. I noticed you mentioned Traffup? I never heard of this place can you share more about it? I can tell you a little of Tailwind. I just started with Tailwind. They have a free trial you can try them out if you wanted. Anyhow they pin your posts for you on pinterest, facebook and twitter if someone wants to. It schedules your pins for you so you don’t have to spend a bunch of time online pinning to get exposure to your website. So far I like it, I will most likely upgrade because the price seemed fair to upgrade.

    1. Hi Nikki, Great yes Traffup you can add websites, tweets, IG posts, and Pins on.  You get points for viewing different websites and these points are then used to share your posts.  Thanks for the info about tailwind I will try this out soon. 

  2. Hey Alex, 

    Thanks for these tips and resources. I’m excited to check them out. I’ve heard of Tailwind before – lots of bloggers in my niche use Pinterest and it’s apparently a must-have. I’m going to try it out and also check out Herculist. The more trafic the better! Thank you!

    1. Hi Katie,  OK great to hear from you.  I will be doing the same myself I’m just getting used to herculist and the tribal thing I’ll be giving a test soon.

  3. This post is actually meant for me and it’s right on time. I recently started a new website and driving traffic to it is giving me a headache, I really am no expert in this so I am very slow in getting things off the ground. Thanks to this article I can begin to apply your methods and getting the disired traffic and page visitors. I want to be able to record a large number of visitors to my website daily. I really appreciate this post, I can’t wait to start implementation of your wonderful ideas. 

  4. This is a handy site.  I have responsibility in my work for our website, and my bosses are always asking me to try and find ways to improve the ranking of our website.  It’s a great looking site, but not that many visitors unfortunately. I have bookmarked your site as this could be really helpful to us. Hits v hits looks helpful.  I like the idea of backlinks as a way of partnering with companies that are complimentary to us but not in direct competition. I found the Herculist site loaded quite slowly.  What do you think is the number 1 method of increasing traffic to your site, beyond key word research?

    1. Hi Trevor,  I’m still trying to find this out.  Social Media, PPC, Backlinks, Traffic Exchanges there are lots of options did you watch the Youtube video about Tribal Marketing?

  5. I am presently an affiliate marketer needing all the traffic to my site that I can get. I have found that good SEO and original, well written contact does not always generate traffic even if ranking on browsers is good.  The back links can be difficult to establish.  Herculist seems like something that would be very useful as you have described it.  I am going to do a bit more research in terms of cost, format and anything like up sales.  Thanks for offering this information.  

  6. One thing that I learned about Traffic Exchanges is simply this: Most people want traffic and some want traffic and a new online business. Which brings me to this equation: TE is a hamster wheel you spin on for a few hours a day in hopes that someone, somewhere for that 12-5 second ration of time, will stop, sign up to your business and generate you income. But that only happens occasionally, at least for me. Can’t say for yourself. Of think of it like this: When you go on traffic exchanges to surf, what the first thing you’re concern about?

    A: Getting points and views and sales to your landing page or offers

    or

    B: Scouting for another new shiny online business (that may stick around for 6 months then disappear or be around for 10 years) and join that new business

    If you answered A, then assume that the 22 thousand other people on that TE is also thinking the very same priority 

    1. Yes, I agree totally.  I am skeptical though because some of my CB sales have been after using Traffup.

  7. I really appreciate this article. Thank you so much for sharing this great article with us. I had very little idea about increasing my website traffic, so my product wasn’t selling as well. Through your poster I learned about website traffic and sales growth tips. I will follow your tips and use PPCs and backlinks to my website, I hope I succeed.

    Can I share this post with my social media? I hope others benefit from me.

  8. Your post arrived at a most auspicious time for me. I am at a point where I have about 55 posts on my website and giving more attention to building traffic. Your suggestion on how to set up Pinterest in combination with Tailwind was very appealing. 

    Currently I am attending a 4 course weekly webinar on Wealthy Affiliate on Pinterest. I have created a Pinterest business account and am following the directions learned on this webinar series. I’ll see where that takes me.

    During the Christmas period I paid for ads on my FB site. I had significant increase in traffic for the posts I placed the ads for. However, no sales. I feel I have to do a better job in using the filtering system as well as how I structure my posts to encourage sales. 

    One of the great things of creating an online business is the learning process. Seeing what you have done and continue to do to bolster traffic is one of these learning processes. Thanks for addressing this issue.

    I will check out some of your suggestions and see what the results are.

    I wish you much success in your quest for increasing traffic and more sales.

    Cheers!

    Edwin

    1. Thank you, Edwin,  Will you be trying the Herculist method?  this is the one I’m really interested in at the moment but trying to learn a bit more about the system first.  I am looking myself at google ads at the moment they do £75 free advertising credit for £25 but it’s a little complicated I will be covering this along with facebook in another ad I think.

  9. Hi there, so just to clarify what a back link is, this is what we are doing within wealthy affiliates? Am I right. I’ve not looked in to paid ads yet but that is coming I feel, with the more content I put on my site. I already use a few traffic exchange sites but not had anything from them as yet, I enjoy surfing while watching tv in the evening. I will check out the ones you recommend. Thank you for this.

    1. Hi Michael, a Backlink is when one of your links is found on another website.   For instance, did you type in your website when you left this comment? that is a backlink  Or if someone shares a link to your post within there’s that is a backlink.  As for traffic exchanges same I am still trying to figure out if they are actually any good or just a waste of time.

  10. I have tried many traffic exchange platforms throughout the last year and I got lucky with one that gave me a lot of visitors and activity but they didn’t stay long. CashJuice I think is another one. I have part of that for some time but haven’t yet seen any results. I also had no idea what backlinks were so I’m glad I came across this post. 

    1. Hi Stephanie,  Yes traffic exchanges I think sometimes they can be good for getting referrals, leads but whether or not you can actually just write a review and be able to make commissions i am still on the fence about.  Cashjuice I have not tried myself but sounds like it might worth taking a look at.  And glad you found this helpful.

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